ArtNet reports
The judge had to decide whether the act of concealment qualifies as “modifying” an artwork.
A pair of offensive murals about slavery can be covered up by Vermont Law School against the artist’s wishes, a second circuit court ruled on Friday, according to Courthouse News. The judge upheld a previous verdict made by a district court in 2021 that concealing the artwork would not violate a federal law that protects artists from having their work destroyed or modified.
The school commissioned white artist Sam Kerson, now aged 77, to make the two murals in 1993. Each measuring eight by 24 feet, the paintings were intended to commemorate Vermont’s role in the Underground Railroad, a network that helped enslaved people flee the U.S. south for the northeast and Canada.
Over the years, some students have criticized Kerson’s use of racist caricatures to portray Black people, describing them as “cartoonish” and “animalistic,” with “large lips, startled eyes, big hips and muscles eerily similar to ‘Sambos’.”
The school’s administrator Shirley Jefferson told the New York Times in February that she used to discourage students from protesting against the images until the murder of George Floyd in May 2020: “All of a sudden I said to myself, ‘that mural has got to go.’” She was among more than 100 students, staff, and alumni who sighed a petition for the mural to be removed.
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